The Stories of John Cheever

It's tough to read 60+ short stories, much tougher than reading a novel of the same length. Every four or five pages you reset and start over.

The best of John Cheever, another in the list of pulitzer prize winners I am reading. They are in chronological order, so they do get better and more polished and more "Cheever" as the book progresses. His best are here, including the one everyone has to read in school, "The Swimmer." That story is very representative of the whole collection. The woes of suburban living, the American dream unrealized, man copes with loss, and so forth. Cheever sticks to what he knows. New York City and it's suburbs, New England vacation spots, and Italy after the war.

There are a lot of good stories here, and a few that I didn't like very much. This is a book opinion, after all, and my opinion is that he did a great job occasionally, and missed the mark occasionally, and the rest of the time did very well.

It's also obvious how influential he was on short story writers that followed him. Some of his writing seems dated - he favors an omniscient viewpoint, sometimes addresses the reader directly, uses very little dialogue, and sticks to characters that are rich. Was he writing for his audience, the rich New Yorker?

If you are a short story writer, I recommend studying these stories in detail.